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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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REED STUDENTS RECEIVE MCGILL-LAWRENCE INTERNSHIPS

Reed students Adam Adler ’01, Sarah Banner ’02, Van Butsic ’03, Megan Harrington ’03, Armand Perry ’02, Erin Snyder ’02, Dana Waichunas ’02, and Sarah Wald ’01 recently received McGill-Lawrence internship awards from Reed College. The award offers Reed students the opportunity to complement their academic studies with summer internships in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Originally funded by a bequest from Marian McGill Lawrence, a longtime friend of Reed College, the awards are intended to help cultivate an environment of understanding and respect for varying cultures. The endowment for this grant has increased during the past two years through generous student body contributions. At least 50 percent of the funds awarded go to proposals that bring students in contact with ethnically and culturally diverse populations.

Adam Adler, of Berkeley, California, is planning a yearlong program working as an intern with the Case Western and Siem Reap psychiatric aid program in Cambodia. He will act as coordinator of mental health training at the Siem Reap provincial hospital, where he will help distribute an estimated $100,000 in aid from donors. Additionally, Adler will work on organizing psychiatric clinics in three district health centers.

Sarah Banner, of Bellingham, Washington, will intern with Famplan Jamaica, a non-governmental organization working on family planning outreach and health care in Jamaica. Her internship will focus on health education in clinic settings and direct community outreach. As a one-on-one peer educator, Banner will help empower young women by teaching women’s health and AIDS education.

Van Butsic, of Menomonie, Wisconsin, will intern with Oregon Sustainable Agricultural Land Trust, where he will run a profitable organic business and work on a strategic plan for farmers to follow. He will complement the internship by designing and teaching a course on world hunger and organic agriculture at Summerbridge Portland, a free enrichment program serving academically motivated middle school students.

Megan Harrington, of Ashland, Oregon, will travel with the Reed Jalapeño Cultural Exchange to Jalapa, Nicaragua, where she will participate in a summer-long internship with Friendship City Projects. In the 14 years that FCP has worked in Jalapa, they have helped build a preschool and potable water systems, and have supplied medical items to the region. Harrington will work on developing either a water project or a medical center, as well as acting as liaison between foreign donors and Nicaraguans.

Armand Perry, of Phoenix, Arizona, will also intern with Famplan Jamaica. The organization places a particular focus on the empowerment of women, as well as comprehensive literacy, health and sex education programs for adolescents. Perry will concentrate on the continued development of Famplan’s adolescent outreach programs and on identifying ways to improve and expand their current methods of education.

Erin Snyder, of Oregon City, Oregon, will intern with the Austin Homeless Advocate, a grassroots newspaper written by and for homeless people in Austin, Texas. Snyder will focus on establishing a writers’s group at the Advocate in order to develop a basis for the consistent and lasting participation of homeless people in the newspaper. In addition to her work with the writers’s group, Snyder will work to help the Advocate achieve 501c3 status.

Dana Waichunas, of Portland, Maine, has set up an internship with Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, a nonprofit organization working to use medical knowledge of environmental influences on health for public education. Waichunas will develop a sustainable internship program so that Oregon PSR can continue to sponsor interns. She will also establish a research, education, and outreach initiative pertaining to the use of pesticides on Portland public school grounds.

Sarah Wald, of Torrance, California, will intern with the American Lands Alliance on the regional old growth campaign. Her internship will focus on current public lands policy, specifically on the commercial logging of old growth forests on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest. Wald will research and prepare action alerts and press releases, as well as working on coalition building to encourage support for national legislation.